Microchipping credit and debit cards may be a good idea in helping avoid identity fraud (if you have much to be defrauded of). Many people are avoiding getting into debt these days as well as busy just trying to survive and pay bills. As long as in the future, this doesn't evolve into chipping humans - not everyone believes every single human action needs to be tracked, traced, recorded and watched. What are your beliefs about it? If it were required for you to be chipped in order to access your bank accounts, buy food, pay bills, acquire medical treatment, etc., what would you do? Do you have a plan of action no matter which direction this topic turns? If the banking system and economy are truly as fragile as they appear to be - why not creative alternatives and wean free from credit and banking altogether? Definitely something to think about!

While many are looking forward to the next-generation Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ) iPhone because it will likely be thinner, feature a larger screen, and even offer improved pixel density on its display, the really impressive part about the new iPhone will probably be the A8 processor. In fact, while Apple's A7 was touted as "desktop class" (and in many respects it was), the A8 should bring new meaning to that phrase.

The Apple A7 was a massive jump from the A6The Apple A7 chip, according to Apple, sported "over 1 billion" transistors and fit all of that into a die area of 102 square millimeters. Apple has claimed that this is roughly twice the number of transistors found in the prior-generation A6, which implies some pretty substantial efforts on the design side of things as Samsung's 28-nanometer process did not offer anywhere close to twice the gate density of the 32-nanometer process.

Furthermore, the A7 also offered roughly twice the performance of the A6 chip, thanks to a significantly beefed-up CPU core, much faster graphics block, and a lot of system-level improvements. The trade-off here is that the A7 also seems to consume more power than the A6 at full load, but because the chip is much faster it can finish workloads more quickly, racing to an "idle" state more quickly and ultimately saving power consumed.

The A8 could be an even bigger jumpIn moving from Samsung's 28-nanometer process to TSMC's (NYSE: TSM ) 20-nanometer, Apple will again roughly double the number of transistors that it can put in a given chip area. Assuming it sticks to the roughly 100 square millimeter die sizes that have characterized its last couple of product generations, Apple should have north of 2 billion transistors at its disposal. To put this into context, this is about 43% more transistors than theIntel (NASDAQ: INTC ) Haswell chip found inside the MacBook Air.

It is very likely that with such a transistor count, as well as the performance/power improvements that the 20-nanometer transistors bring, the iPhone 6 will offer peak CPU and graphics performance that is well ahead of many of the Intel Bay Trail-M based notebooks and Bay Trail-D based desktops that will be shipped during this back-to-school season.

Did you just say Apple's iPhone 6 could outperform PCs?Yes, you heard that right: Apple's iPhone 6 could offer more performance than many PCs. In fact, the A7 chip inside of the iPhone 5s already offers superior graphics performance to Intel's Bay Trail-M and Bay Trail-D parts found in low-cost notebooks/desktops, respectively, and the CPU performances of Bay Trail and Apple's A7 -- at least in the few cross-platform benchmarks out there -- seem roughly equivalent (A7 has higher single-core performance, but Bay Trail has more cores).

With A8, this will only get better for Apple, particularly as Intel is not planning to refresh its low-end PC chips this year in any meaningful capacity. The higher-end Haswell/Broadwell parts should still be noticeably faster (particularly Broadwell), but the fact that Apple will soon be selling customers a phone that will be across-the-board faster than the lowest-end PCs is quite exciting.

Foolish bottom lineThe upcoming iPhone 6 will break ground in a number of key ways, but by far the most interesting from a technological perspective will be its performance. Apple's chip designs are world class, and with the increased transistor budget afforded to it by TSMC's 20-nanometer manufacturing process, the iPhone 6 should offer pretty unreal levels of performance.

Desktop class, indeed.

Of the 165 stocks in the Supernova universe, Motley Fool co-founder, David Gardner is on a mission to find just ONE: Between now and January 30, 2014, you’re invited to “hit the road” with the Supernova team to find the ONE STOCK most deserving of a large, real money investment to kick off 2014!

Stop the press! IBM Research announced this morning that it has discovered a whole new class of... plastics. This might not sound quite as sexy as, say, MIT discovering a whole new state of matter -- but wait until you hear what these new plastics can do. This new class of plastics -- or more accurately, polymers -- are stronger than bone, have the ability to self-heal, are light-weight, and are 100% recyclable. The number of potential uses, spanning industries as disparate as aerospace and semiconductors, is dizzying. A new class of polymers hasn't been discovered in over 20 years -- and, in a rather novel twist, they weren't discovered by chemists: they were discovered by IBM's supercomputers.

Do you use Pinterest to help market your business?Have you realised any business value from using Pinterest?

To make Pinterest work as an effective tool for your business, consider the fundamentals in matching visual content to business messaging.

Creating marketing campaigns around visual content is always an attractive proposition due to the human nature to like rich and engaging content. You will find that the average internet user is much more likely and receptive to spending 10 minutes watching a YouTube clip than spending the same time reading a text-heavy article....

Pinterest can be a valuable additional SM asset to you, especially if you show pictures on your site for your products or services. Used properly it can be a lucrative channel, due to the demographics of the clientele!

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.